This site is for those who would like to know the opinions of
other Pentaxians with respect to Pentax equipment. When I came
back to potography a few years ago, I found that my mind was
boggled by the then current discussion of the relative merits of
the broad range of 135mm K-mount lenses produced by Pentax over
the years. I tried to get it straight in my own mind by cutting
and pasting others' comments into a coherent form. I'm still
trying to get it straight.

There are several good sources for Pentax equipment on the
Web; I have put links
to some of those locations below. Most of these will give you good
objective data about Pentax cameras and lenses; some cover
equipment currently available at retail outlets, some cover older
equipment, and some do both. However, as far as I know, only one
site goes beyond a listing of f-stops, number of lens elements,
physical dimensions, numerical ratings, etc. That site is the
Pentax Discuss discussion group.

The daily message flow of 50-250 messages among committed
Pentax users frequently addresses questions like: "which 50mm lens
is better: the 1.2, 1.4, 1.7, or 2.0?" Discussions sometimes
include results from structured tests, but most often are
unsubstantiated opinions, hearsay, and gossip. As far as I
am concerned, this is extremely valuable information! If
three trusted sources all say "...pictures with lens #1 have
better contrast than with lens #2", then I will be able to use
that information. On the other hand, if a chart tells me that lens
#3 has 58 lines-per-millimeter definition at the edges while lens
#4 has 66 line-per-millimeter definition at the edges, I have no
way to interpret and use that information. Others can and do, I
just don't think that way. The Pentax Discuss messages are stored
in an archive someplace, but unfortunately I found it very
difficult to do a quick search through the archives to see what
might have been said about a particular lens. The 'old' archives
were lost in the switch from one system (supported by Pentax USA)
to another (done strictly by volunteers using their own time and
resources), and the new archives are reputed to be of limited
utility. So, I have tried to organize the lens opinion "data"
here.